'Crimson Peak': Bloody and Grotesque but Is It Scary?

They don't make horror films like they used to. And maybe that is a good thing. Guillermo del Toro's new film Crimson Peak recently opened along with a few other frightening films (The Last Witch Hunter, Goosebumps, Jem and the Holograms).

In the creepy weeks leading up to Halloween, this abundance is perhaps meant to take advantage of the punters' wish for a few jump scares and some spooky happenings.

But unlike the cheapo variety of Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, Crimson Peak is primo horror, the quality stuff. You can see its good breeding in its overstuffed two-hour running time and its dedication to lavish costumes, thespian flourishes and thick rich set design. Everything is fine lace, thick velvet, giant mutton chop sleeves, and moustaches.

The thing virtually oozes money -- it is pumped out of the walls, thick and syrupy, dripping with excess. But despite a budget that most likely surpasses the gross domestic product of a few small countries, the film fails at its most fundamental aim: namely to be scary.

Apparently, Mr. del Toro has been nursing this idea in his big swollen head for a number of years, and it shows. This is a film that never met a cliché it didn’t like. All the set pieces are there -- a crumbling English manse, a mysterious, perhaps deadly, new husband, and strange bumps and groans in the attic. Many writers and filmmakers have plumbed the inky depths of the gothic genre, from the Brontë Sisters to old Alfred J. Hitchcock. And the del Toro seems to reference almost every single one of these earlier works, from Jane Eyre to Rebecca -- even elements of Kubrick's The Shining pop in for a quick hello.

Piling one thing on top of another until you have a giant heap of things isn't frightening, it's exhausting. But you have to give del Toro credit for maintaining his commitment to his vision. At a certain point, one simply gives in to this endless onslaught. In the theatre where I saw the film, you could almost feel the moment this happened, as silence gave way to giggles and groans.

Our introduction to our heroine, one Edith Cushing (the luminous Mia Wasikowska), begins with the death of her mother from the black cholera. Like most mothers, this one is not content to let things lie. She needs to meddle a bit. After mother dear has been laid in the ground, she makes a surprise comeback, complete with long spidery fingers and mouldering visage, to issue a hissed warning. ''Beware Crimson Peak! AOOOOOOOOHH!'' (Actually I added that last bit, but the message is clear: bad things happen when you ignore your mother). So, Edith sees dead people. It is a surprisingly useful skill, as the story will eventually prove.

Flash forward some 14 years and young Edith has grown into an enterprising early-20th century young woman with literary ambitions and more crinolines than you can shake a stick at. In the brave new city of Buffalo, New York, American society is built on hard work and enterprise. While Edith hammers away writing gothic fiction, her father, a self-made industrialist, keeps a close eye on his daughter. Perhaps with good reason as beautiful Edith has attracted the attention of a hunky young doctor (Charlie Hunnam).

'Get to the point, del Toro'

All of this lead up is just that: a means to establish Edith's spunk, and introduce the men who adore her mixture of fragility and spine.

''Get to the point, del Toro,'' one thinks, and eventually he does. Iris in to the entrance of a pale English aristocrat named Sir Thomas Sharpe (played by Tom Hiddleston, fresh off his role of Hank Williams in I Saw The Light, a film infinitely more horrifying than anything Mr. del Toro could ever envision).

Hiddleston is a fine actor, and I mean that in more than a figurative way: lean, hollow-cheeked and possessed of an impressive widow's peak, he was born to play such dissolute, romantic claptrap. So too, Mia Wasikowska, who reprises the steeliness that she brought to her previous role of Jane Eyre with another toothsome Englishman (Michael Fassbender). In Crimson Peak, the pair are met and matched by Jessica Chastain, who plays Sir Thomas's sinuous sister Lucille. It's all a romping good time for a while, as the sneaky English types whisper ominous things to each other, bang away at the piano, and give off a pervasive funk of dissipated Continental debauchery. It's little wonder the Americans look upon them with equal parts horror and disdain.

The action picks up when the Sir Tom claps eyes on the young American heiress. A bit of a waltz, some romantic nuzzling, and the deal is sealed with the bloody and brutal murder of Edith's dear old dad. Before you can say, ''Beware of stuff!'' Edith and her new husband arrive back in Cumberland where sinister sister Lucille awaits.

The fourth major character in the film is the Sharpe's ancestral home, and here the filmmaker spares no expense. A rotting, ornate wedding cake of a house, Allerdale Hall is festooned with turrets and riddled with darkened rooms chock-a-block with dolls heads, dusty wheelchairs, and red-rimmed cast iron bathtubs. But this is nothing compared to the basement, where thick red goop is forever sliding down the walls like a never-ending menstrual cycle. Any reasonable human being would say, ''Ick!'' and decamp immediately, but not our indomitable Edith, who sets about uncovering the mystery at the centre of this place. The explanation given for all this red ooze is that the house is set upon a particularly rich deposit of scarlet clay.

It is here where the film loses its mind a little and races full title boogie towards insanity. Even while ghosts, specters, and bloody great spooks are clambering out of the floorboards and jumping out of every closet and cupboard, Edith traipses about in pre-Raphaelite ringlets and a diaphanous nightgown. Holy hammer horror! Add in a candelabra and an annoying yappy dog and you have everything you need for jump scares aplenty. So, why doesn't she just leave on the next coach out of town? I suspect the girl is simply horny. She can't get her new husband to consummate the marriage, as every time she wakes up in their marital bed, he is mysteriously elsewhere.

Despite the committed performances and the lavish design elements, the film telegraphs every single plot twist, like a train on the prairie. You can see it coming from far off, chugging along, determinedly, heading towards you with its cargo of bloody payoff. I won't spoil what few thin surprises do exist, but suffice to say, brother and sister should not be left alone, unattended in the house. (Arch an eyebrow here and nod knowingly, if you take my meaning).

Hammered with horror

By the time things reach their operatic crescendo, the violence ramps up to somewhat grotesque scale. Folks get gutted, stabbed in the face, and their heads hammered in with gusto. There is a lot of screaming, hacking and flailing bloody nightgowns. If this final gory stuff is an effort to convince the audience that this in indeed a horror film, it all comes a little bit too late.

The thing that occurred to me long after the tail credits was that filmmakers shouldn't be allowed to indulge themselves. Or, if they do, maybe treat the film like a fattened goose, glutted with so much richness that it explodes -- a veritable foie gras of cinema that is delicious and nasty at the same time.

Mr. del Toro comes quite close to this quality. But while the visual splendor of his film is obviously what he is most inspired by and interested in, there is altogether too much of it and too little attention paid to the actual plot, which feels moth-eaten and tired even before an army of gigantic hairy moths show up to nibble away at the curtains.

The golden hue and embroidered lushness of Edith's gowns, her massive expanse of hair, and all the endless Rococo detailing has a way of obscuring any genuine fear, or even really much feeling at all. Bloody corpses lurch down the hallways, groaning and retching, and you watch them like you would paint drying. Albeit, paint of a particularly vivid crimson. It much more interesting to look at the details of brooches, teacups and bowties, than it is to care about this trio of loonies locked in a passionate death struggle.

Maybe it is harder to be scared by imaginary things as we age. Really, periodontal disease is far more terrifying than anything Hollywood could invent. Which perhaps explains why I left the theatre with a melancholy bent. When I was child, The Wizard of Oz was terrifying. Laurel and Hardy scared me. Even Scooby Doo was a somewhat dubious mixture of pleasure and pain. Fear was a constant -- maybe this is simply part of childhood -- but I remember it with a mixture of regret and weird nostalgia for when films could terrify you so profoundly, you would wish for the sweet relief of unconsciousness.

Fear reminds you that you are alive. Painfully, wonderfully, horribly alive for a moment, which is why we weird humans (or at least this weird human) still enjoy a bit 'o horror now and then. Crimson Peak doesn't quite do it, and like a bout of bad sex, it leaves you empty, wanting something that would touch and terrify your inner most nerve.